...real criticism begins in the capacity to grieve because that is the most visceral announcement that things are not right. Only in the empire are we pressed and urged and invited to pretend that things are all right....And as long as the empire can keep the pretense alive that things are all right, there will be no real grieving and no serious criticism.
But think what happens if the Exodus is the primal scream that permits the beginning of history.
- Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination
Christianity has been the single most creative cultural, ethical, aesthetic, social, political, or spiritual force in the history of the West, to be sure; but it has also been a profoundly destructive force; and one should perhaps praise it as much for the latter attribute as for the former, for there are many things worthy of destruction.
- David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions
Criticism, destruction, grieving - not words you'd associate with Western Christianity today. Perhaps not even words we would
want to be associated with.
